The present invention relates to a disk array system capable of mounting a plurality of disk drives therein, and a method for disk drive security.
In database systems dealing with a huge amount of data, such as a data center, data is managed using a storage system configured separate from the host system. A disk array system is known as an example of these storage systems. A disk array system manages multiple disk drives arranged in an array with the RAID method. In the physical storage areas provided by a group of disk drives, at least one logical unit is formed, and this logical unit is provided to a host system. The host system recognizes the logical unit as one physical device, and performs data access to the logical unit.
In these kinds of disk array systems, a disk drive may be removed or transported from a disk array system for maintenance, etc. Since analysis tools that enable inappropriately reading data stored in the removed disk drive are commercially available, measures to prevent leakage of information are increasingly important. Examples of specific measures include physically destroying a disk drive removed from a disk array system, and erasing all data stored in a disk drive by the method set forth in the regulations provided by the U.S. Government.
JP-A-2002-41362 and JP-A-2001-35092 are known as examples of documents referring to techniques preventing unauthorized storage device access.